Please take a moment to send a postcard or letter to one of the green prisoners (POWs) listed here. When a prisoner opens a letter, love and care from the outside world pour out and surround a person in a very dark place.

The links to the left will take you to current POW profiles which include mailing addresses, photos, videos, and court case information.

Southern California medical marijuana patient and provider Aaron Sandusky is serving a 10 year federal prison sentence for operating a medical cannabis cooperative in full compliance with state law.

Federal authorities threatened clinics such as Sandusky's G3 Holistics, Inc. (Upland, CA) in 2011. In June 2012, Aaron Sandusky, his brother, and four other people were arrested during a DEA raid of the G3 Holistics medical cannabis clinic.

At a jury trial in fall 2012, Sandusky was convicted of possession with intent to distribute marijuana involving at least 1,000 plants. Sandusky received a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years on January 7, 2013.

April 27, 2010 - Five gardens allegedly connected to the B&C Natural
Things collective in Ridgecrest were raided by NCIS, CHP, Kern county
sheriffs, Inyo and Cal City SWAT teams. Taken into custody were Erik
Christopher Stacy (27), Robert Davis Dodson, Jr, Charles Lee Kisor,
Charles Edward Klaus, and Geoffrey Edward Bliss. All are reportedly
charged with cultivation of more than 1000 plants, the aggregate of the
gardens. Each plant was labeled with a patient's name; the collective
had 450 patients.

April 27, 2010 - Five gardens allegedly connected to the B&C Natural
Things collective in Ridgecrest were raided by NCIS, CHP, Kern county
sheriffs, Inyo and Cal City SWAT teams. Taken into custody were Erik
Christopher Stacy (27), Robert Davis Dodson, Jr, Charles Lee Kisor,
Charles Edward Klaus, and Geoffrey Edward Bliss. All are reportedly
charged with cultivation of more than 1000 plants, the aggregate of the
gardens. Each plant was labeled with a patient's name; the collective
had 450 patients.

One day after he was interviewed on a local television station about his
home medical cannabis garden, Denver resident Chris Bartkowicz's home
was raided by the DEA . Bartkowicz was charged in federal court on on
February 16, 2010 with cultivating 224 plants (119 of which had root
structures and 105 clones). He pleaded guilty in October 2010 one count
of possession with intent to manufacture, distribute or dispense
marijuana. On January 28, 2011, Chris Bartkowicz was sentenced to five
years in prison, to be followed
by eight years of supervised probation; Bartkowicz will also undergo
mandatory drug and mental health programs.

Bartkowicz's release is projected for January 29, 2014 by the Bureau of Prisons.

Federal agents arrested 12 people in San Diego County associated with
Joshua Hester, who
was arrested in West Hollywood on July 9, 2010. The indictment claims
that Hester,
29, distributed 3,000 pounds of marijuana he purchased from a major Los
Angeles dealer in 2007 and 2008. Federal authorities also claim that
Hester was the silent owner of the San Diego's Downtown
Kush Lounge and Mission Bay's Green Kross Collective. The Mission Bay
location was co-owned with Joseph Nunes, who was arrested in a September
2009 raid by San Diego law enforcement.

Joshua Hester pleaded guilty on January
3, 2012 to eight counts including conspiracy to distribute over 1,000
kilograms of marijuana, conspiracy to maintain drug-related premises,
and conspiracy to launder money. Hester was sentenced
to 100 months in custody by U.S. District Judge Irma Gonzalez on
January 24, 2013.

Hester will serve over eight years in federal custody for operating Kush
Lounge and Green Kross Collective. Since October 2011, the U.S.
Attorney’s Office, in coordination with the
Drug Enforcement Administration, has issued cease and desist letters to
about 253 marijuana dispensaries in the San Diego County and Imperial
County. The Department of Justice reports that there was a 95 percent
self-closure rate in response to
the letters. Fourteen remaining dispensaries in the San Diego area
were raided in September 2009.

Civil attorney Dale Schafer and his wife, physician Dr. Mollie Fry, began
serving 5 year sentences on May 2, 2011 for cultivating medical
marijuana in a home garden that never had more than 44 plants at a
time. However, the federal government added up the number of plants
grown in the seasons between 2001 and 2005 and charged the couple with
growing 100 or more plants, which carries a 5-year mandatory minimum
sentence. The couple spent more than six years of litigation and three
years of appeals for charges of manufacturing and conspiracy to
manufacture and distribute cannabis.

Dr. Fry, a breast cancer
survivor who had gone through a radical mastectomy, grew her own
medicine throughout her illness, surgery, and chemotherapy. Schafer
suffers from
hemophilia and failed back syndrome, is under constant care, and also
medicated with cannabis legally.

Physician Dr. Mollie Fry and her husband, attorney Dale Schafer, began serving 5 year sentences on May 2, 2011 for cultivating medical marijuana in a home garden that never had more than 44 plants at a time. However, the federal government added up the number of plants grown in the seasons between 2001 and 2005 and charged the couple with growing 100 or more plants, which carries a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence. The couple spent more than six years of litigation and three years of appeals for charges of manufacturing and conspiracy to manufacture and distribute cannabis.

Dr. Fry, a breast cancer survivor who had gone through a radical mastectomy, grew her own medicine throughout her illness, surgery, and chemotherapy. Schafer suffers from
hemophilia and failed back syndrome, is under constant care, and also medicated with cannabis legally.

YouTube Video

The judge wouldn’t allow any medical evidence. They wouldn't let us
tell the jury I was sick, or that I was a doctor. They
wouldn’t allow that I was helping sick patients. Ironically, two years
before the raid, local authorities asked me to tell them who of my
patients were 'really' sick, and who wasn't." I told them it wasn't my
job to police my patients, and that everyone who came to me had
legitimate health issues. They have treated us like criminals.

~Dr. Mollie Fry

Cannabis is proven medicine. Why would the state of California create
laws based on what the people want, and then allow the federal
Government to override them? I had cancer, we were growing
medicine. I was helping people.

Medical marijuana grower Bryan Epis has been caught in a legal nightmare ever since June 1997, when law enforcement agents seized 458 marijuana plants and various computer documents from his home in Chico, CA. That raid occurred mere months after California voters legalized medical marijuana statewide, and Epis’s case quickly inspired outrage in the activist community. Not only was he charged with criminal cultivation, prosecutors used documents taken from the search to charge him with conspiracy to cultivate over a thousand plants. Epis was unable to mount a medical defense to his charges because he was prosecuted on the federal level, where state medical marijuana laws don’t apply.

When the case went to trial in 2002, prosecutors relied heavily on out-of-context excerpts from the seized computer documents, which had been printed from different computer programs in a manner that made them appear as a series of separate documents involving various locations. The jury ended up finding Epis guilty and he was given the mandatory minimum sentence: ten years in federal prison. Epis was incarcerated for over two years before getting released on bail pending appeal in August 2004, a move that gave him five and a half years of freedom to spend with his young daughter.

However, in spite of claims of prosecutorial misconduct and missing evidence, Epis lost round after round of his appeal. By February 23rd, 2010, he had exhausted his legal options and was taken back into custody to serve the remainder of his ten-year sentence.

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.